Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The Herculeians died screaming.

Steel rang, flesh split, and bones broke under the terrible weight of Yarzat halberds. What began as battle had become butchery.

"Don't run now!" barked a footman, his voice hoarse from the fight as he drove his boot into the chest of a soldier. The Herculeian fell backward with a grunt, scrambling on blood-slick grass. A moment later, the heavy blade of the halberd came down like judgment, cleaving through spine and ribcage with a sickening crack.

All across the left, the Black Stripes were in their element, fighting not with honor, but with hunger.

They fought in silence, for the most part, save for when they chose to speak, which most of the time was during a pursuit.

They were men after all, even though after half an hour of fighting they didn't look like it, so they had to take pleasure in their own way.

A Herculeian levy cried for his mother as a Yarzat dragged him by the hair, blood pouring from a crushed cheek. "She's not here, but I'll sing you a lullaby anyway," the man whispered, almost gently, before slitting his throat with the edge of his axe. The blood sprayed in an arc across the man's face, and he let it paint him, grinning through it.

Another, armored only in quilted linen and barely old enough to shave, tried to crawl away with a gut wound, intestines spilling like snakes. "I'll make it," he muttered, his self-conviction stronger than his stomach. "Just breathe. Come on. Deep." The boy tried as much as he could, in the end; however, he gurgled and choked on blood.

The field was a symphony of ruin, iron on iron, men wailing like animals, the wet impact of weapons sinking into bodies.

Bodies were everywhere. Some crawling with a blade on their legs. Some frozen mid-scream, eyes glassy. Some trampled so thoroughly by boots that they were nothing but clothing stuffed with gore.

And yet the Yarzat line pushed forward, unrelenting, unmerciful.

There was no music here. No glory. Only the rhythm of slaughter, and the cruel laughter of those who had been taught not just to kill, but to enjoy it.

It is a strange thing , the quiet prison a man builds for himself.

Not chains of iron, nor ropes of hemp. But something subtler. Something far more cruel.

Expectation.

The unspoken belief that to stray from the herd is death. That to turn one's back when others still face forward is betrayal. That the man who runs is not merely a coward, but a pariah. So they stand. Not out of courage, but indeciviness in straying away from the rest.

Even now, as the field groaned beneath the weight of corpses, as their comrades bled out screaming into the dirt, most of them having failed even to scratch the armor of their enemy, the thought of fleeing never truly reached their minds. Not because they lacked the will to survive, but because they felt they lacked the permission.

They stood like children in a burning orphanage, the flames licking closer with every second, but too afraid to shatter the glass and leap. Too afraid to be the first.

And behind them, far behind the breaking lines, the eagle waited, cruel and cold-eyed. Watching. Watching for the weak. Watching for the slow. Watching to clip the wings of any fool who tried to fly.

It was only when one man, nameless and unnoticed, standing in the rearmost ranks with no blood on his blade and terror in his throat, when he dropped his spear and shield and turned, that the dam finally cracked.

A single act of desperation. A decision born not of bravery, but instinct.

He ran.

And in his cowardice, he gave the rest permission to live.

First one. Then three. Then a dozen. The line shivered like a wound opening. Shields dropped. Helms cast away. Spears trampled underfoot. It wasn't a retreat.

It was flight.

The Herculeians broke like deer scattered by thunder, every man trying to outpace the other, pushing and cursing and howling for deliverance as they scrambled across the blood-soaked grass, slipping on entrails, crawling over the wounded, throwing aside weapons and pride alike.

And the Black Stripes came after them.

Like demons loosed from the pit.

They didn't pursue with order. They hunted.

Silent. Swift. Smiling.

The Yarzat infantry came behind them with wild eyes and black-streaked armor, not marching, not advancing, but charging, full-bodied and roaring, weapons raised, feet pounding the earth like the hooves of a thousand devils.

"Run, you bastards!" one of them howled, his voice cracking into a bark of laughter as he drove a mace into the back of a fleeing soldier, dragging him down like a wolf collapsing a deer.

There were no more formations. No more war cries. Just butchery.

Some Herculeians were run down like dogs. Others were speared in the back, limbs flailing as they hit the ground with screams they didn't even have time to finish. Some curled into balls and begged. Some tripped and were trampled by friend and foe alike. The Yarzat carved through them with mechanical precision, cutting tendons, hamstrings, necks.

One soldier fell, sobbing, trying to crawl with one arm as the other hung shattered. A footman stood over him, breathing hard.

"You shouldn't have taken the field," he said quietly, and brought his boot down on the man's throat with a crunch that echoed louder than any trumpet.

From the hills, it looked like a stormcloud had overtaken the field, black-clad demons sweeping over sheep.

The price for loyalty to the wrong cause.

The payment due for courage without cause.

And as the last of the Herculeians fled, shattered, wounded, broken, there was no glory in it. No defiant stand. No tales of valor. Only the memory of screams and the laughter of those who hunted them.

And in the end, that was all they had left.

--------------

This had to be one of the fastest collapses Alpheo had ever seen.

He stood still, high above the field, hands folded behind his back, as the courier finished delivering his report, breathless, eyes alight with the kind of disbelief that only came when victory fell into one's lap faster than expected.

"The enemy's right has broken, my prince. They're in full retreat."

As if Alpheo needed to be told.

His eyes had already taken in the unraveling of the Herculeian flank. He could see it in the shifting glint of metal as shields were dropped, in the erratic scattering of what once were formations. The proud right , usually the prince's flank, had disintegrated into nothing more than a panicked tide fleeing toward the woods and hills behind them, running as if the Black Stripes were not men, but vengeful spirits at their heels.

"I didn't expect them to collapse after... what? Thirty minutes?" he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. "So much for the backbone of the Herculeian line.And to say that I spent more time preparing for this that to fight the actual battle."

But there was no time for self-congratulation.

Victories weren't finished when a line broke, they were finished when you made sure the broken didn't live to fight another day.

He turned to the same courier, already preparing to bolt. Alpheo caught his eye and spoke with the crisp authority of someone who had rehearsed this moment a thousand times in his head.

"Inform Lord Jarza: he is to pursue the enemy with all but three subcenturii. Leave those three to drive into the heart of the Herculeian position and flank their center from the right."

The courier snapped a sharp salute, the satisfaction of delivering good news seemingly energizing his limbs, and took off again like an arrow loosed.

Alpheo turned back to the battlefield, the wind tugging gently at his cloak. The right had crumbled clearly. The middle would follow soon enough. It was simple battlefield math: once one side ran, the rest usually didn't want to die holding the line alone. Still, he frowned.

It was regrettable that both Lord Egil and Sir Mereth were still otherwise engaged. They would have been ideal for exploitation and pursuit, light cavalry with a thirst for blood, perfectly suited to chase a broken army down and finish it in the fields.

But no, Mereth was locked in combat with the Herculeian cavalry on the far left, their lines snarled in a brutal, thundering clash of horse and steel.

And Egil... Egil, the showman, was still dancing with the enemy's right-wing horsemen. They were wasting time , a chess match on horseback with no winner in sight but the advantage of having valuable knights pinned in a theater of delay.

Which left Alpheo with little more than his infantry to press the advantage.

So be it.

If there was one thing this campaign had proven, it was that the Black Stripes didn't need to ride to kill. They ran faster than cavalry and hit harder than steel rain.

And right now, the enemy didn't need to be outrun. They only needed to be caught while they were still looking over their shoulders.

Alpheo took a final glance at the horizon, his mouth a tight line of focus.

Let the infantry run them to hell.

But more important than basking in a battle already won was the question that loomed heavier than any charge: what now?

As Hannibal would learn winning a battle was as much important as what came after.

Alpheo knew better than to let that moment slip away.

He had to pursue everything that this victory gave him. Every scrap of opportunity, every glimmer of momentum. If there was an opening, he had to wedge a sword through it. If there was a lord hesitating in the shadows, unsure whether to remain loyal to Lechlian's collapsing regime, he had to feel the cold edge of consequence press against his throat before he chose wrong.

There could be no pause. No breath for the enemy to catch. No path for retreat or regrouping.

He knew that what he did in the next days would matter more than the last two years of marching and preparation.

History didn't just remember the man who broke the line, it remembered the one who knew what to do when the line was already broken.

And so, with jaw set and gaze unflinching, he turned toward his commanders, already preparing the next wave. Not of war, but of domination.

Because what he searched for , was not the collapse of an army—

—but the collapse of a realm.